Preparation of infant formula usually involves the following steps manually:
1) Prepare warm water with proper temperature.
2) Pour ideal amount of warm water into a milk bottle.
3) Scoop required amount of formula powder corresponding to the volume of water in the milk bottle and place it into the bottle.
4) Mix the formula powder with the warm water, usually by shaking the milk bottle.
The volume of water and the amount of formula powder need to be substantially accurate, so that the concentration of the prepared formula is optimum. A concentration lower or higher than optimum will affect a baby's nutritional absorption and is bad for the baby's health. The temperature of water also needs to be controlled so that the formula is comfortable for a baby to drink. More importantly, the preparation process often needs to be completed as quickly as possible, especially at night when a baby wakes up in hunger. If the preparation is fast enough, the baby does not get too agitated by hunger and can go back to sleep easier. Failure to prepare formula in a quick manner may make the baby more awake crying in hunger and harder returning to sleep. This will also give a hard time for the caregiver and result in less sleep. Scooping formula powder and the final step of mixing water and powder by shaking milk bottle are not very difficult or time consuming. The most challenging part is obtaining certain amount of water with ideal temperature, especially at night when the caregiver is quite sleepy and with limited lighting.
Many prior arts try to facilitate the formula preparation process in different aspects to certain extent. Examples are U.S. Pat. No. 2009018839A1 issued to Sinnema et al., U.S. Pat. No. 20050230343A1 issued to Huber et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,766,106B2 issued to Roberson, U.S. Pat. No. 6,829,431B1 issued to Haven et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 7,316,249B2 issued to Cheong. However, there are still some aspects need to make further improvements and some new concerns introduced by this type of inventions also need to be resolved.
Most prior arts deal with cold and sterilized water. Some of them can efficiently heat up the water to warm and dispense controlled amount of warm water. However, there are still needs of boiling water for sterilization. In this case, water needs to be heated up to about 100 C and cooled down to warm, which will take an undesirable long time if a baby needs formula at that moment. None of the prior arts have good solution in this situation. There are some existing ideas of boiling water long before formula preparation and giving enough time for hot water to cool down, then maintaining a warm temperature by a temperature controlling and heating system. However, the downside is that maintaining warm water by repetitive heating for a long time will easily contaminate the water and grow more bacteria, which defeats the purpose of boiling for sterilization.
Many apparatus in prior arts also comprise a mixing unit for dissolving formula powder with water before putting them into the milk bottle. However, hand mixing method by shaking milk bottle is also fast and easy for most instant dissolving formula. So a mixing unit is only optional. Some designs of mixing units may introduce more moisture into the remaining formula powder and cause agglomerating and bacteria growing problems. Furthermore, these mixing units in prior arts will need cleaning after each formula preparation, which adds more effort for a caregiver.
Similarly, some hot beverage such as hot tea, instant coffee and hot chocolate, etc. are also prepared by mixing beverage powder with hot or warm water. Usually a spoon is used to scoop certain amount of beverage powder then mix with a cup of hot or warm water. However, the concentration and temperature is not well controlled. Sometimes, if hot water is not immediately available, it may need a water heating device which can take a long time and not convenient. Also, not all beverages need hot water for preparation. Some can be quickly dissolved in warm water, if prepared with hot water, one has to wait for some time to cool it down before drinking. Therefore, there are also needs for quick water sterilization, short preparation time and controlling of beverage powder dispense amount, water temperature and water dispense volume. Thus, a device for preparing infant formula can also be used for beverage preparation with some modifications.
There are related prior arts for hot beverage preparation devices such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,063,838 issued to Matuschek and U.S. Pat. No. 6,612,224 B2 issued to Mercier et al. However, there are still aspects need improvements and none of them can be used for both infant formula and beverage preparation.